Summary
Elon Musk’s threats to fund primary challengers to Democrats in safe districts, following his role in nearly forcing a government shutdown, have reignited calls for campaign finance reform.
Musk, who spent $277 million backing Republicans, criticized a bipartisan spending bill and used his platform to sway GOP opposition, influencing legislative outcomes.
His intervention has sparked outrage among Democrats, with leaders like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez warning of rising oligarchy and calling for reforms to limit super PAC and dark money influence.
The episode highlights growing concerns over Musk’s political power and its impact on democracy.
Elon is sure acting like he feels like a god lately. Hopefully it doesn’t all blow up in his face because he’s a bumbling dumbshit or anything…
Trump and Musk are both ego maniacs. They will have a falling out, just a matter of when and how salty they will be publicly. Fingers crossed for full on social nuclear war!
We need Mario.
I’d love to see Bernie’s idea of taxing anything over 999 million at 100% get implemented. I bet most Americans would actually be for this.
You can get by on 999 million.
And, when you get into the 999 million club, you also get a red hat that says “I won” on it because you’re an insecure dipshit in a cult that needs constant validation because your father didn’t love you, elon.
Yeah, but just because, let’s say, 90% Americans support it doesn’t mean it will ever get passed.
It’s a whole can of worms no one in the financial sector wants to tax unrealized gains like you’re imagining tho. I like the idea in general.
The main part of the tax is that rich assholes would not longer be able to use those unrealized gains as collateral for loans. Because as soon as those gains are realized, they’re taxed.
This alone would massively limit the power of rich assholes.
Yup, the borrow buy die financial strategy should be 100% illegal.
Honestly, at this point I wouldn’t be surprised if they backstop a Bitcoin bubble bust with taxpayer money. This country has been fully corrupt for some time now.
There are some problems with it that make it not as simple as it would appear.
-
If it was 100% perfect and not cheatable then the economy would a just around it as the new norm. In a few years people would say “you can get by on 99 million” and they’d be right. There would be calls to lower it again and the economy would shift around it. Imagine an MMO with a max coin cap and you can visualize the economy of it. The price of everything might eventually come down, but we would still be unable to afford any of.
-
It’s cheatable. Elon can’t make 70 billion in one year? That’s why he has 70 kids and they’re all employees of Eloncorp and they each make 1 billion. Or, if you don’t trust your kids (which he probably wouldn’t since …) You could just form 70 corporations to hold the money.
Rich peoples money is tied up by accountants and lawyers so tight there isn’t a magic fix for it. Elon could litigate through an entire presidency until his paid for politician was elected and could undo the tax laws.
-
This is what you get when you define corporations as people and define money as speech. (Citizens United) The monkeys are running the zoo
Like that will ever happen.
America reforming its corporate dictatorship is about as likely as it reforming the British Empire or Confederacy.
OMG you guys, could Bernie have been right?!? Could it be that the citizens united decision has been a disaster for the country that we should’ve been organizing for an amendment to fix this whole time? Or were the multi-billion dollar pacs – the ones that are only made possible by this terrible decision – right when they said he was a scary socialist that wanted to make America into Venezuela or whatever?
I always thought the billionaire supervillain with campy punchlines and so annoyingly obvious and mask-off manipulation, threatenings and other evil goings-on was a dumb, unrealistic and improbable trope
But here we are
“Hey I know just made more money than the Roman empire was worth by manipulating politics but ummmmm… could you please make rules that stop you from beating everyone else?”
The time to stop this was in 2016. Democrats had every opportunity and continued to fellate their corporate overlords instead of even paying lip service to their base. We’re in the “find out” phase. I’m sorry you’re losing your job, but guess what, it only gets worse from here
Citizens United decision was in 2010, and after 2011 they lost the votes needed ever since, so probably more like 2010/2011 was the only time they had enough power to do anything about it.
To be clear, a law banned PACs in 2002 but the courts decided that banning the pacs violated the first ammendment, meaning that simply passing a new law wouldn’t cut it. You would need either a constitutional amendment, replacing the courts, or some other measure involving a supermajority.
Great point. I’m sure like most things related to shitty American politics if you go back far enough there’s Reagan bullshit in there too. We had a lot of opportunities to not be here, and yet here we are
Yeah I really wish I didn’t have to think about Reagan’s bullshit like all the time.
A. Fucking. Men. Brother
Just to add a little bit of humour to this situation:
Reading your comment without the periods becomes “a fucking men brother” which can be interpreted however you like
But golly, the fella was a jelly bean fan, ya know?
Nixon was terrible, but the ball really, REALLY got rolling under Ronnie Raygun.
You can go back to Prescott Bush and the Business Plot. His son was head of the CIA and Reagan’s vice-president, went on to become preside George Bush.
And in 2000 his son won the presidency via the Supreme Court after a VERY sketchy incident known as the Brooks Brothers Riot.
On the 2nd Bush’s watch we gpt 9/11 followed by massive increases in domestic surveilance and a huge wave of jingoist “patriotism” which created an evironment where criticizing the government was equivalent to being a baby eating social communist.
I remember calling it the last free election back then and people said I was being dramatic.
15 years of examples later, Project 2025 is on our doorstep and I’m still being dramatic …
new urgency
Anyone who had their minds changed over this can eat shit. If you have to be personally effected to realise something is wrong you need to [removed]
Fat fucking chance it passes under Republican Majority, but if they do somehow get Citizens United overturned then I’m willing to forgive them.
I heard that Citizens United is woke. Everybody’s been saying it.
So he could finance a “Democrat” who will promise to switch parties after they win?
